Ha! I noticed too yesterday and almost commented the same thing. Don't know about the rest of the world but in the US talking your way out of responsibility is high art and it's so refreshing to have owernship backed apology instead we tend to get pretty ++y.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other